Transferring global variables from D to C

[Dainius (GreatEmerald)]

> However, this gets quite inefficient with a lot of different strings,

I just had an idea, perhaps it's possible to work around this
particular point by creating a wrapper function that converts the
passed variable into the C string type? The problem with this idea is
that I can't find a way to pass the variable to begin with. Whenever I
try to do that, D receives an empty string. My C code is this:

    extern char* str;
    printf("string is %s\n", getString(str));

While the D code is this:

    shared string str="a";
    extern(C) immutable(char)* getString(string MyString)
    {
       writeln("Attempting to convert ", MyString);
       return toStringz(MyString);
    }

This results in "Attempting to convert ", and not "Attempting to
convert a", so obviously D is not getting the right data. But it
doesn't segfault, either.